MELANIE PARKER: Hi, everyone.
My name is Melanie Parker.
I'm Chief Diversity Officer for Google.
I'm joined by James Heighington, our Global Head of Diversity
Strategy for this session.
All of you in this session today know
the demand for cloud technology solutions
has ramped up dramatically these few months.
The need for reliable tools that help teams collaborate remotely
has never been greater.
As your companies make decisions about whether you're
working from home or the office, you
might be starting to wonder how that will impact your workplace
culture.
You're probably asking questions like,
how's the real value of my businesses workplace culture?
How might we continue to foster community
and belonging with a more distributed workforce?
How are my company's decisions influencing its commitments
related to diversity, equity, and inclusion?
I'll be upfront.
I don't have all the answers.
I'm wrestling with the same questions, too.
In fact, our CEO, Sundar Pichai, was recently asked about this.
He mentioned how our campuses have
been designed to foster collaboration and community, as
well as chance encounters that lead to innovation.
But he also said that we're looking
at the data and the feedback from employees with an eye
toward offering more flexibility to work
from home in the future.
These conversations are ongoing.
And there are still many unknowns about the future.
But today, what is clear is we need
to have a deep understanding of our workforce
before we begin to insert DEI into the dialogue
in a meaningful way.
And one of the key ways we reveal our understanding
of our workforce and the progress
we're making through DEI is through our Diversity Annual
Report.
We've published it the past six years.
And we just recently released the 2020 report.
So today, I want to share with you
how we're building a workforce that reflects all communities,
as well as some of the DEI strategies
we're using to cultivate a sense of belonging at this time.
Every year since 2014, we've published our Diversity Annual
Report.
We were one of the first to do so in our industry.
The report is anchored on the fact
that there's some underrepresented groups who
have historically been discriminated
against and excluded from opportunities
and who today remain affected by systemic racism, xenophobia,
and the like.
We continually try to look at our data
and capture more nuances about all of the people who
work at Google.
We always want to see more humanity in the report.
Everyone wants to see themselves reflected and validated.
I should also note that we have supplements to this data,
including a survey called Self-ID, which is global.
Through it, we're starting to expand
how we look at our workforce.
So with that backdrop, I want to share with you what
we're learning along the way.
This report provides one of the largest publicly available DEI
data sets in our industry.
This data represents real people who make real contributions
to our mission and our culture.
And we must keep in mind that human element.
Data drives everything Google does, from the way
we develop products to the way we
design our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
Before we dive in, a couple quick notes on our data--
first, we include gender data globally and race in the US.
Around the world, there are various government protections
on what data we must collect, as well as what data we cannot
collect.
This report is aligned with standard business practices
for multinational corporations, even
as we find new ways to collect more globally inclusive
data through Self-ID.
Second, we use a plus sign in all our racial categories
to indicate multiracial people are plussed
in to each racial category.
Previously, multiracial people were
counted in a single category, which doesn't fully
represent their identity.
We made this change to be more inclusive.
With DEI, most people think of the data surrounding
how our workforce is growing to better reflect
the communities we serve.
These changes in our workforce representation
are largely driven by two inputs, hiring and attrition.
Let's start with hiring.
Google did well in several key ways in 2019
when it comes to hiring.
We have both tech and nontech jobs at Google.
Last year, we saw the largest increase for Black tech
hiring we've ever measured.
We also look at new hires, our "newglers," as we call them.
We're pleased that Black newglers now
make up the largest underrepresented racial group
in nontech hiring.
We measure success in other ways, too.
For example, a Googler-built tool
helped us identify and remove gender bias
from job postings, which helped us to increase
women applicants for many jobs.
And our internship program, which is remote this summer,
continued to build broader pathways to tech.
We still want to see stronger hiring growth
in some underrepresented groups, such as
Native American Googlers.
And we'll try to focus on that this year.
In addition to hiring, it's equally important
to focus on retaining Googlers from all underrepresented
groups.
With that in mind, our Latinx community
is the first underrepresented group
to see attrition rates for both women
and men below the average, a positive development,
even though there was a slight increase for Latinx women.
Women on average at Google still had lower attrition rates
than men.
At the same time, attrition rates for Black women
are now higher than average attrition rates.
How do we do better with regards to retention?
One strategy is we build on what works.
For example, we have what we call "retention equity teams."
84% of Googlers who went through that program
have decided to stay at Google.
We're already building on that number this year,
which is critically important because retention
is going to play a key role in helping us
achieve our aspirational goals.
We've covered hiring and attrition.
Let's see where Google landed with representation overall.
We saw continued growth in representation for women
globally, as well as for Black and Latinx Googlers in the US.
We also had the largest increase in Black+ representation
overall and in technical roles since we began publishing.
For the second year in a row, we maintained our growth rate
of representation of women in leadership roles globally.
We also see further proof that our internal mobility programs
are paying off.
Last year, the increase in women leadership
was attributable mostly to promotions, not hiring.
And this year, we see a similar trend for our Latinx leaders.
Tracking the annual data is very useful in working
towards goals in hiring, retention,
and overall representation.
Let's zoom out of it and look at trends over multiple years.
The fact is, in recent years, we have scaled up
our diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives
to match the pace of Google's growth.
Since 2014, Google's global headcount
has increased by 170% and our US headcount by 180%.
As you can see, the growth rate of underrepresented Googlers
has generally grown even faster.
This demonstrates an ongoing commitment
to what we call "responsible growth," with these percentage
points representing thousands of new underrepresented Googlers
joining.
This data is critically important.
And I hope all of you have taken that first step
to start gathering data to help guide your DEI strategies
and goals.
But obviously, the work doesn't stop there.
In Google's case, we're actually working
in a larger context of our societal responsibility
to build a robust, diverse talent pool for our industry.
We must not only focus on Google's immediate hiring
needs, but also on long-term, systemic solutions.
Consider this.
Someone born in 1998, the year Google was founded,
is only now completing university.
Preparing the next-generation workforce
for the increasingly technical nature of work
requires long-term partnerships with government,
educational initiatives, policymakers,
and community organizations.
And on that note, I want to turn it over to James Heighington.
JAMES HEIGHINGTON: Thank you.
As Melanie stated, we view our work
within the larger context of our societal responsibility
that we have at Google to build a robust, diverse talent
pool for our industry.
And that's why, in 2019, we strengthened our partnerships
with both local organizations and local communities.
And we started to expand the vision of our work
to include not only education, but entire ecosystems
in the communities that we call home.
We're addressing these systemic challenges head-on.
And we're doing so in order to responsibly grow our talent
and meet industry demand.
This past year, we implemented versions
of this holistic strategy in places like Atlanta, London,
and cities around India by engaging
with not just the educational sector,
but with local businesses, community organizations,
elected officials, even urban planning and real estate
developers.
This reflects how Google and these communities
can come together to invest in shared success
and realize mutual benefits.
The issues that we're facing are systemic.
And it's our responsibility to help address them and invest
back into the communities and infrastructure that
support our growth.
As Google continues to grow, we have a responsibility
to scale our diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives
and increase pathways to tech in the communities
that Google calls home.
It's important to think about the end state here
of what we're actually working towards when we think about
diversity, equity, and inclusion.
This is not about diversity just for the sake of diversity.
This is not just about the heads that we have sitting at desks.
But this is about creating a real sense of value
for the experiences and expertise
that everybody brings to their work every day.
And those experiences and expertise
can help improve our company, our products, and the services
that we provide.
But in order to truly unlock that value
from every one of our employees, we
need to ensure that everyone feels included.
We need to ensure that everyone feels
like they belong at Google.
Inclusion means everyone.
And that also means the job of creating
an inclusive environment is a job for everyone.
At Google, we believe this is not just
the role of the diversity team.
This is a shared responsibility among every employee
that works at our company.
And what we need to do is make sure
that we are not just accelerating this work,
but that we are expanding this work
and doing so so that every Googler--
in particular, those from underrepresented groups--
experiences an inclusive workplace.
On this journey, we can measure how we are doing.
And we do measure how we're doing
through a series of internal indexes
that we have created here at Google and also by using
external indexes that we have.
For example, in 2019, we were proud to file the Disability
Equality Index.
And we use these indexes to benchmark our efforts
and make improvements as we go along.
These indexes aren't an end state.
They are guideposts that we use on our journey.
When we started reporting this data in 2014,
we used the data that we had available on hand at that time.
And as Melanie mentioned, that's the data
that we had collected through mandatory government reporting
obligations.
But as our understanding of diversity, equity,
and inclusion has grown, so, too,
has the need for a more robust and inclusive data set.
And we've responded by introducing a new data set.
And that is Self-ID.
The goal of this is to have a more global and more fully
inclusive data set that we can use to expand our DEI
work in a data-driven way.
Google is one of the only companies in our industry
to collect this amount of information on a global scale.
And here's how we've been able to put some of this data to you
so far.
We've hosted five Women of Color Summits
around the globe over the past year
to ensure that we are focusing on the intersectional
experiences of women of color at all the Google
offices that we have.
We've also used this data to continue
to expand the company-wide goals that we
have around accessibility.
In addition, we use this data to analyze the company pulse
survey that we do every year and ensure that we are looking
at results by race and gender, in addition to things like
disability status, nonbinary genders,
veterans and military service, for the LGBTQ+ communities,
and age as well.
When we also think of inclusive, it's
important that we are being inclusive
of more demographic identities.
But we also want to ensure that we
are being inclusive in more regions
and taking a global approach of our DEI work.
At Google, we have more than 100,000 employees
spanning nearly 60 countries.
Operating at this level brings an extra layer of complexity
to everything that we do.
At the same time, we need to balance that
by recognizing diversity, equity, and inclusion
is unique to every region.
We need to ensure that we are understanding
each local context and developing
local strategies in response.
And this year's diversity report reflects that work,
with nearly half of the content coming from outside
of the United States.
What you see on the screen is just part of the work
that we've done over this past year.
We are continuing to invest in this work.
And we are committed to telling more global DEI
stories about our work as we go forward.
All of the work that we've been talking about
highlights how we are building a culture of belonging.
And for more on that, I'll turn it over to Melanie
to wrap us up.
MELANIE PARKER: Thank you, Jim.
As we move further into 2020, Google
is anchoring on the common thread that
binds all of our DEI efforts.
Belonging describes a vision that we continually
aim to achieve.
We can't see our colleagues in person due to COVID-19.
But it's inspiring to me to see how
our Googlers are finding creative ways to cultivate
a sense of belonging.
For example, our employee resource groups
are hosting music, trivia, and dance parties
on Google Meet, our video conferencing tool.
Groups of Googlers are also pulling together
to volunteer their time and expertise to important causes
that help communities affected by COVID-19.
And on a larger scale, Google and google.org
are supporting many organizations and communities
within Google and across the globe,
leveraging our tech and our funds.
I'm sure that many of your companies and your employees
have been engaged in similar activities
to the ones I just described.
The COVID-19 situation will continue
to shape all of our DEI work.
For Google, that means we must continually
renew our commitment to serving communities
with the greatest needs and ensuring equity for all.
We have to take steps to help Googlers feel like they belong,
even if they aren't physically back in a Google office
just yet.
We want to understand what belonging truly means
and what needs to be done so that all Googlers can continue
to help us cocreate our culture and that we leave no one out.
I hope that some of the information that we've
shared in our session today has spurred some ideas for you
to consider in your own DEI work,
from how you track workforce representation
to your global DEI strategies.
Have a great day.